The Gone World

This book almost defies description. It's not for everyone, but it sure checked a lot of boxes for me: time traveling science fiction, thriller crime novel, strong female lead character. It's a genre-crossing, roller coaster ride through time and space. Shannon Moss, when we meet her in 1997, is an investigator with NCIS who has been trained in the Navy's top-secret black ops Deep Waters program, which involves travel to and exploration of Deep Space and Deep Time. She is called to investigate the murder of a family, the wife and children of Navy SEAL Patrick Mursult, and the disappearance of his eldest daughter. Although Mursult is considered the prime suspect, Moss learns that he had traveled to Deep Time on a secret mission back in the 1980s, and his ship never returned home. So he shouldn't even have been alive on Earth to commit the murders. Her supervisors decide to send her into Deep Time, into one of many possible future time streams, to see if she can find any clues to help solve the Mursult murders. Another thread that is always a vital part of Deep Waters investigations is the fact that many trips to Deep Time and Space have revealed what they call the Terminus, the end of the world. The year of the Terminus seems to be receding closer to their own, real time, which they call terra firma (1997). Moss's travels back and forth between 1997, 2015, and 2016 reveal that the family's murders were part of a much bigger plan involving a mutinous group of Navy SEALs who know about the Terminus. She meets many versions of people she knows in these various time streams, and it's utterly fascinating to see how an individual life can play out differently in many disparate scenarios.The descriptions of the science behind time travel could be too much mind-boggling detail for some readers, and the violence depicted is not for the squeamish, but the story is brilliantly written, totally unique, and absolutely
worth the effort. You'll never look at coincidences and deja vu quite the same way again!

Kelly Currie